Saturday, Dec 27th
Last update09:19:08 AM GMT
In response to a Wall Street Journal report that found the average length of stay for families with children in city homeless shelters has shot up by more than 30 percent during the last fiscal year, Hizzoner said the following:
"We have made our shelter system so much better that, unfortunately, when people are in it, or, fortunately, depending on what your objective is, it is a much more pleasurable experience than they ever had before."
Alexis' father, Rony Molina, who runs a small landscaping company, was born in Guatemala but has lived here for 12 years and is an American citizen. Alexis and his 8-year-old brother, Steve, are Americans, too. So is their 19-year-old stepsister, Evelin. But their mother, Sandra, who lived here illegally, was deported to Guatemala a year and a half ago.
"How can my country not allow a mother to be with her children, especially when they are so young and they need her," Rony Molina asks, "and especially when they are Americans?"
A huge explosion rocked Venezuela's biggest oil refinery and unleashed a ferocious fire Saturday, killing at least 24 people and injuring more than 80 others in the deadliest disaster in memory for the country's key oil industry.
Balls of fire rose over the Amuay refinery, one of the largest in the world, in video posted on the Internet by people who were nearby at the time. Government officials pledged to restart the refinery within two days and said the country has plenty of fuel supplies on hand to meet its domestic needs as well as its export commitments.
After a Constitution, Bill of Rights, and assorted amendments, we may be intellectually exhausted. You have to admit, that was a stretch of extraordinary thinking, imagining such lofty thoughts as being worth a go by mere human beings.
Of course, founding this country on genocide and slavery are facts that have kept many of us up, late at night, stark awake, inconsolably saddened.
The US ambassador to Israel has told the family of an American pro-Palestinian activist who was killed in Gaza in 2003 that the US government remains dissatisfied with the Israeli army's decision to close its official investigation into the incident.
Rachel Corrie, 23, an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, was crushed to death as she tried to stop an Israeli army bulldozer from destroying Palestinian houses in Rafah, on the Egypt-Gaza border.
Rev. George Koharchik, 63, Pastor of the Saint Catherine of Siena Parish in Mount Union has been removed from the active ministry, according to a press release from the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese. According to the Most Rev. Mark Bartchak, Bishop of the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, Koharchik will not be permitted to function as a priest and "will reside at a place where he has no contact with children."
The federal government can't require tobacco companies to put large graphic health warnings on cigarette packages to show that smoking can disfigure and even kill people, a divided federal appeals court panel ruled Friday.
In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington affirmed a lower court ruling that the requirement ran afoul of the First Amendment's free speech protections. The appeals court tossed out the requirement and told the Food and Drug Administration to go back to the drawing board.
Vietnam taught politicians the PR challenges of holding a fine war with a draft in place: All of a sudden, everyone and his brother had some real skin in the game, with so broad a population base up for grabs as cannon fodder.
Today, politicians think nothing of narrowing their gun sights, and sharpening the burden to a fine point -- one supported by very few backs. With a more-or-less volunteer force, you just demand the same small group returns to the battlefield over and over and over -- while promising to look into the puzzling reasons soldier suicides have skyrocketed.
They unconsciously summarized the Obama speech that they are trying to mis-characterize. Even though the convention center sports a corporate sponsor's name, it really was built by government with union labor.
The "branding" of public buildings with corporate names is really a subtle propaganda ploy to make people think that everything good is provided to them by their benevolent corporate overlords. Americans have been conditioned to believe things that come from corporations are free, and that government is expensive. This is the opposite of reality of course.
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